Who else besides Beamer? Tanner’s phone records connect dots on USC coaching search
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Inside USC’s coaching search
Exclusive look at the Gamecocks’ process in deciding to hire Shane Beamer.
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Six days before coach Will Muschamp and South Carolina took the field for their Nov. 14 game at Ole Miss, a different sort of kickoff was occurring.
On Nov. 8, a 64-minute call transpired between USC athletic director Ray Tanner and the search firm consultant that South Carolina would hire to help find the next leader of its football program.
Seven more calls from Tanner to Chad Chatlos of Ventura Partners Inc. followed in the next week, the last of which came at 1:48 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 15. Muschamp was officially relieved of his duties after a meeting with Tanner around 6 p.m. that night.
The search that would eventually land Shane Beamer back in Columbia had begun.
“At the end of the day, the expectation to win games was coming up short,” Tanner told reporters on Nov. 16. “That’s what we’re judged on. That’s what our aspirations are.”
The State obtained Tanner’s work phone records from Nov. 7 to Dec. 6 as part of a larger Freedom of Information request for the period South Carolina worked through its coaching change. The State initially requested these records Dec. 14. The request was not fulfilled until May 14 — five months later.
The records provide a glimpse into Tanner’s handling of the search but is in no way a complete picture.
One thing is clear, however. The search was as vast as it was meandering.
A wave of candidates for USC opening
In the days following Muschamp’s firing, Tanner had contact first with Beamer, followed by calls to numbers associated with then-Alabama offensive coordinator and current Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian and Liberty head coach Hugh Freeze — who was previously fired at Ole Miss after NCAA violations involving escorts.
Tanner also had more than 50-minute conversations with numbers associated with Coastal Carolina head coach Jamey Chadwell, Louisville head coach Scott Satterfield and then-Florida offensive coordinator Brian Johnson on Nov. 20, 21 and 22, respectively, according to the records.
A number attributed to Chicago Bears assistant coach and former South Carolina linebacker Chris Rumph also had contact with Tanner at least four times throughout the search — the first two calls coming on Nov. 24 (one of which went to voicemail), the second on Nov. 28 and the last on Nov. 30. Rumph was interviewed via videoconference, a source at USC told The State.
Louisiana Tech head coach Skip Holtz — an assistant coach with the Gamecocks for six seasons — also interviewed for the job virtually, according to the USC source. (A number associated with Holtz did not appear in Tanner’s call logs.)
Wofford head coach Josh Conklin, Green Bay Packers special teams coordinator and Citadel graduate Maurice Drayton, former Arizona Cardinals head coach Steve Wilks and one-time Atlanta Falcons head coach Dan Quinn all reached out through alternate avenues, according to email records, though none appear to have been seriously considered.
Tanner’s call logs also indicate he made at least four trips that likely were for in-person interviews. Calls from Tanner to the phone associated with Chadwell that originated in Pawleys Island on Nov. 22 coincide with previous reports the pair met there to discuss the head coaching vacancy.
Tanner made similar trips to Gainesville, Florida; Bowling Green and Mammoth Cave, Kentucky; and Atlanta.
The Nov. 27 Atlanta trip was likely Tanner’s face-to-face meeting with Beamer. It coincided with Oklahoma’s bye week, where Beamer was serving as an assistant coach.
Reports at the time indicated Tanner met Dec. 4 with Satterfield in Mammoth Cave — about 90 miles south of the University of Louisville’s campus.
Following the revelation Satterfield had interviewed with South Carolina, he denied doing so. Satterfield later wrote a letter to Louisville fans over the debacle.
“If something in the future popped up and if you want to look at it, you better be very, very serious, and it’s because I don’t want to put our fans, I don’t want to put our players or anybody through what’s transpired here over the last 48 hours,” Satterfield said Dec. 7 in his first public comments after the meeting. “I’m not interested in doing that. So if it is something out there that is enticing, it’s going to have to be very, very serious and something you can be out front about ... and we’ll go from there.”
Contact between Shane Beamer and South Carolina
Beamer was tied to South Carolina’s opening almost as soon as Muschamp’s ouster was official.
Former players advocated on his behalf. So did board members and influential boosters. Even acquaintances in Oklahoma, where Beamer and his family lived during his time as an assistant coach under Lincoln Riley, reached out to Tanner regarding the opening.
According to Tanner’s call logs, Beamer appears to be the first coach contacted by South Carolina’s athletic director on Nov. 19 ahead of the numbers associated with Sarkisian and Freeze. The latter coaches’ phone numbers do not appear again in the logs.
Tanner, calling from Columbia, again made contact with Beamer for 25 minutes at 9:01 a.m. Friday, Nov. 27. Later that day, Tanner’s phone made or received six different calls from Atlanta.
South Carolina’s athletic director also held a 61-minute call with Beamer at 8:35 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 2. Tanner’s trips to Gainesville and Mammoth Cave followed on Dec. 3 and Dec 4, respectively.
Following his return to Columbia on Dec 5, Tanner spent the final hours before news of Beamer’s hiring broke on calls with Chatlos, then-USC President Robert Caslen, South Carolina chief of staff and executive associate AD Charles Bloom, and former South Carolina wide receiver Moe Brown.
Chatlos remained largely apprised to the ongoing search as he and Tanner traded at least 70 calls between the day Muschamp was fired and the day Beamer was introduced as head coach.
A number associated with USC senior deputy athletic director Chance Miller also appeared in the logs over 60 times during that span, while Caslen’s number arose at least 20 times.
Brown, who ran for Congress in South Carolina’s 5th Congressional District last year, was heavily involved in lending former players’ voices to the process, speaking with Tanner at least nine times during the process.
A former wide receiver at South Carolina, Brown was a member of a small contingent of alumni who spanned six decades of Gamecocks football and spoke with Tanner as a sounding board — though they weren’t part of official interviews.
“He understood from a macro level how essential it was to have alumni back,” Brown told The State on Tuesday. “Our relationship has always been one that’s very transparent, one that is very direct. And so this was just a continuation of the relationship that coach Tanner and I have established over the years.”
Billy Napier’s involvement with USC
Then there is the interesting case of Louisiana head coach Billy Napier.
Numbers associated with Napier, who previously served as an assistant at Alabama and Clemson, were noticeably absent from Tanner’s redacted call logs. (USC had the right to redact any of Tanner’s calls that were not work-related.)
Napier’s involvement in the South Carolina coaching search was well documented. Phil Kornblut of SportsTalkSC reported on Nov. 25 that Napier had interviewed for the position.
A source at USC told The State this week that Tanner and Napier spoke multiple times by videoconference during the search, including on Dec. 5, but did not meet in person — and that the only coach offered the South Carolina job was Beamer.
A second source, outside of USC, told The State Napier pulled his name from consideration a few hours after meeting via video with Tanner, Caslen and a handful of other South Carolina officials in the early afternoon of Dec. 5.
Beamer to South Carolina, and the search’s final hours
Just a few hours later, calling from Columbia, Tanner made contact with Beamer about 50 minutes after the Gamecocks’ road game against Kentucky had kicked off.
A pair of calls to the phone attributed to Miller and a single call to Bloom followed that evening. So did a call from Tanner to Crosswind Aviation, a charter aircraft company based out of Orangeburg, and another to South Carolina athletics’ travel department.
Tanner traded four calls with Beamer that evening — the first coming at 8:30 p.m. and lasting 18 minutes. Three more calls of varying lengths between Tanner and Beamer followed between 10:15 and 10:48 p.m.
At 11 p.m., Louisiana put out a statement from Napier announcing his return.
“It’s humbling to be considered a worthy candidate for any job opening, but it’s also important to recognize this is a direct reflection of our entire organization from top to bottom,” he said in the release.
South Carolina’s season concluded at 11:08 p.m. with a 41-18 loss at Kentucky amid the frenzy of breaking news.
Beamer’s imminent hiring was then leaked by The Athletic’s Bruce Feldman via Twitter at 11:16 p.m.
Minutes after the game, and with the Beamer news still fresh, interim head coach Mike Bobo took the podium at Kroger Field.
“Do you know Shane? Would you like an opportunity to stay on his staff once the official announcement is made?” a reporter asked.
“To be honest, and I’ll be totally honest, I haven’t thought about that or given much thought about (staying on),” Bobo said. “My kids have. They asked me that, ‘Where are we going to be? Dad, where are we going to be, are we moving again?’ And I tell them the Good Lord is gonna take care of us and put us where we need to be.”
The next day, Beamer was in Columbia for the official announcement of his hiring and his first team meeting. Then on Monday he was introduced to Gamecock fans at a press conference.
South Carolina had its man.
— The State’s Dwayne McLemore contributed to this story
BEHIND THE STORY
MOREHow we did this story
Using records obtained through South Carolina’s Freedom of Information Act, The State reviewed hundreds of emails from more than 2,300 pages of Tanner’s inbox and sent box from the month of Nov. 7 to Dec. 6. The State initially requested these records Dec. 14, asking for emails, text messages and phone records for Tanner during the time period listed above.
For various reasons, documents were not provided by USC until May 14, five months after The State’s original request.
The university did not acknowledge The State’s request within 10 business days, as required by law, and The State followed up on its request Jan. 25. A university employee responded that same day, saying the school was in the process of gathering the requested information and that he hoped to have a response “in the near future.”
The State sent two more follow-up emails asking for a timeline on USC’s response, on March 2 and April 20. On April 20, the university’s new FOIA coordinator responded, saying she and her staff were reviewing the requested documents and asked The State if “there are any particular topics or keywords you are looking for” to expedite the review process. The State responded with a list of 24 search terms, such as “Muschamp,” “Beamer,” “position” and “interview.”
On May 14, five months after the original request, USC provided hundreds of Tanner’s emails, as well as more than 950 phone records made to or by the athletic director.
This story was originally published June 10, 2021 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Who else besides Beamer? Tanner’s phone records connect dots on USC coaching search."
